Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/351

 use of delicately relieved forms. Here, however, he must not allow the effect in his model to depend in any degree on surface treatment. Care in that respect will prevent disappointment in the finished work.

The most noticeable feature in modern carved surface decoration is the almost universal tendency to overcrowding. It appears seldom to have occurred to the craftsman or designer that decorating a panel, for instance, is not at all the same thing as covering it with decoration. Still less does he seem to have felt that occasionally some portions of the ground are much more valuable in the design than anything which he can put on them. Indeed, the thoughtful designer who understands its use and appreciates its value, frequently has more trouble with his ground than with anything else in the panel. Also, if he have the true 327